The premature braggadocio exhibited by President Trump after his hand-picked Attorney General released his minimalist “summary” of the Mueller report has transformed into the same type of insistent denials of collusion and obstruction of justice that Trump was tweeting every day before the release after news reports indicated that members of the Special Counsel’s team were pushing back against AG William Barr’s characterization of the report’s conclusions.
This morning President Trump demonstrated his incriminating defensiveness about the contents of the report — which no one outside of the Justice Department is known to have seen at this point — in a series of anger-laden tweets that augered a reversal of his earlier calls for the full report to be released to the public.
I have not read the Mueller Report yet, even though I have every right to do so. Only know the conclusions, and on the big one, No Collusion. Likewise, recommendations made to our great A.G. who found No Obstruction. 13 Angry Trump hating Dems (later brought to 18) given two…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 6, 2019
…..years and $30 million, and they found No Collusion, No Obstruction. But the Democrats, no matter what we give them, will NEVER be satisfied. A total waste of time. As @FrankLuntz has just stated, “Enough, America has had enough. What have you accomplished. Public is fed up.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 6, 2019
Returning to his repeated declarations of innocence — declarations that would be considerably more believable if Congress had access to an unredacted copy of the report and its underlying investigatory documentation and if Trump has not been proven to be such a compulsive liar — Trump at least correctly attributes the lack of obstruction charges to Barr who obtained his position after sending an unsolicited letter to the president detailing why he believes it is constitutionally impossible for any president to be charged with obstruction of justice, a position rejected by the majority of constitutional scholars.
Again mischaracterizing the Special Counsel’s team as consisting of “Angry Trump-hating” Democrats while knowing of Mueller’s Republican party affiliation, Trump continues to politicize a Justice Department sworn to non-partisan fact-finding in order to benefit himself.
He also continues to imply that the cost of the investigation was a huge waste of time and money despite the indictments and guilty pleas of numerous staffers from his campaign and the forfeiture of more assets than the investigation cost by his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
The proof of President Trump’s obsession with transforming public perception of the results of the still to be fully revealed Muller report comes from his return to the topic nearly an hour and a half after his initial Twitter rant on the topic.
So, let’s get this straight! There was No Collusion and in fact the Phony Dossier was a Con Job that was paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC. So the 13 Angry Democrats were investigating an event that never happened and that was in fact a made up Fraud. I just fought back….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 6, 2019
…. against something I knew never existed, Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous!) – No Obstruction. This Russia Hoax must never happen to another President, and Law Enforcement must find out, HOW DID IT START?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 6, 2019
Laughably starting this latest series of lies with the imperative of “let’s get this straight,” Trump proceeds to call the largely-verified Steele dossier phony, mischaracterizes its origin as starting with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats when it was in fact begun as opposition research by supporters of one of his Republican opponents in the presidential primary, and tries to justify the beginning of a counter-investigation against his political enemies.
Trump’s public relations offensive in the period between the issuing of Attorney General Barr’s summary and the release of even a redacted version of the Mueller report indicates that he is concerned about the full contents of what the report — which even his own Attorney General was forced to mention in his summary does not exonerate the president of obstruction — may reveal about the actions of himself and his staff.
It’s obvious now that the president stands to lose a considerable amount of credibility once the full Muller report is made public which could be why the redaction process is taking so long and why the Special counsel’s staffers are beginning to leak their dissatisfaction with the summarized “principle conclusions” of the Attorney General.
This is why Democrats are so adamant about ensuring that they have access to Mueller’s unredacted report and all of the underlying documents associated with it.
After all who should you trust: a proven compulsive liar with an enormous stake in the outcome or public servants dedicated to investigating crimes and enforcing laws?
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